Read Online Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox - Free Book Online Page B

ABS – which means able seaman.’
    â€˜I can’t read,’ Billie whispered.
    â€˜Who are you looking for?’
    â€˜Edith – and Henry.’
    Mrs Mulberry nodded and led Billie further in. ‘I’ve forgotten myself,’ she said. Her voice trembled. ‘Forgotten all the names. I helped write the labels last night, and I’ve forgotten.’
    The room was full, but breathless. The women’s skirts hissed against the sheeted figures at their feet.
    â€˜She might mean the young fellow in Irish tweed,’ Mr Mulberry said, in a hoarse whisper from the doorway.
    The women had come about at the stained-glass window, arm in arm, as though they were taking a turn around the parlour on a sodden day. And there was Hesketh, barring their passage, halfway up the room, his arms out on either side of him, not very high, but nevertheless forming a barrier. His pale skin and hair and eyes gave back the lamp’s light, grew lamplike as the women came closer to him. ‘Thank you,Mrs Mulberry,’ he said, and took the lamp from the minister’s wife and placed it beside him on the table.
    Billie looked down at the body he was guarding, but Hesketh put a hand below her chin, fingers fanned – he didn’t touch her, but screened her gaze. She moved her head, but his hand followed, stayed between her and her view. Mrs Mulberry blushed and began to breathe fast.
    â€˜Go on, madam,’ Hesketh said.
    The minister’s wife drew back a pace, but didn’t leave Billie.
    Hesketh placed a cold hand on Billie’s wrist and squatted, pulling her down into a crouch. He used his free hand to move the sheet veiling the head of the corpse. Billie stared – for a moment she couldn’t see the total, only the dry surfaces of bared teeth, dull, like the tea-stained inside of an old porcelain cup. She thought of remedies, like baking soda.
    â€˜See the gooseflesh?’ Hesketh said. ‘It’s as though his skin is still trying to raise some life and warm him.’
    The face was dusky and mottled. The man’s jacket was drawn down and his shirt had burst at the shoulder seams to reveal red patches of haemorrhage. Hesketh followed her gaze: Billie felt it – his bright eyes on her face. He said, ‘It looks as if he was the victim of assault, doesn’t it? But it was only his struggle that injured him. He was looking for something to hold on to. You see, water yields, but wins.’ He went on to say that, while the skin was rough, it wasn’t swollen and wrinkled, ‘He was only a few hours in the water. And it was cold.’ Hesketh stooped, as if to look in under the man’s partly open eyelids and, doing so, leaned a little weight on the overinflated chest. The white foam that crusted the man’s lips and nostrils burst fresh from each, exuded thickly, a white tinged with pink. Hesketh drew back sharply. Both he and Billie stayed kneeling, stunned and penitential. Above their heads Mrs Mulberry said, ‘But – this is Ian Betler.’
    Billie got up.
    â€˜I think we should go have a look at the young man in theIrish tweed,’ the minister’s wife said, and beckoned, very gentle. Billie followed her. As they walked, Mrs Mulberry read out the rest of the labels.
    Henry, however, was among the living, though scarcely conscious. Billie was taken to the doctor’s house, where they found Henry wrapped in bare wool blankets, before a fire, and smelling powerfully of both liniment and brandy. Billie sank to her knees beside his couch, but found herself unable to touch him. There was something between them, it seemed – or nothing between them, an impassable barrier made of an absence.
    Mrs Mulberry carried a wrapped warm brick from the fireplace, lifted Henry’s blankets, and put the brick at his feet. A few minutes after that the doctor appeared and uncovered Henry’s chest, which was marked by a number of red,